What do smart young people think of Rahul Gandhi? The following was published in 'the Wire' by
Dr Dhruv Janssen-Sanghavi- a Netherlands-based professor of International Tax Law
The Bharat Jodo Yatra was inspiring and confusing in equal measure. The message of uniting the peoples of India with love is inspirational.
But that love is conditional on hating the BJP. Rahul will hug cousin Varun- but then he also hugged Modi- but he won't invite him to rejoin the Family party because Varun has lost caste. He has been polluted by contact with Hindutva. Chee! Chee!
The joke here is that it is Rahul's grandfather who was an actual Fascist.
But I wonder what exactly it means to “unite” the country, and am confounded by the lack of any discussion on the subject.
Nothing wrong with trying to unite the opposition parties to put up a joint candidate to take on Modi in 2024. Perhaps, those who had quit Congress or who had been pushed out could be brought back in. At least, the Party could be reunited.
We are familiar with the British policy of “divide and rule”.
The Brits united the people of the sub-continent. Only the Burmese were wholly unreconciled to British rule and only Burma left the Commonwealth.
Using a combination of deceit and bribery, differences between communities were leveraged systematically to pit them against one another.
Nothing of the sort happened. Indians paid the Brits to keep or get Estates. No 'deceit' is necessary if your soldiers slaughter those who oppose them with insulting ease. Maharaja Ranjit Singh was the one military commander the Brits feared to engage . But Sikh cohesiveness declined after the great King's death.
The ensuing chaos ensured that resistance against colonists would not unify.
Indians helped the Brits crush the Mutiny of 1857. Why? British paramountcy was preferable to the alternative.
Naturally, the average informed voter is likely to view national unity as a good thing.
Dhruv must be too young to remember Murli Manohar Joshi's Ekta Yatra from Kanyakumari to Kashmir back in 1991. That boosted the BJP's image as a Nationalist party which might one day be a viable alternative to the INC.
Rahul's Yatra could, similarly, have projected the INC as nationalistic. The problem is that Rahul has said India is not a nation. It is a union of states- like the EU which Britain has exited. Perhaps this is why Stalin backs Rahul to the hilt. It is noteworthy that Stalin didn't rebuke Raja for saying that if autonomy is not conceded, Stalin might revive the call for Tamil secession.
But for a number of reasons, I wonder if this notion of “unity” is not yet another tool to divide and rule?
Rahul has divided his party and isn't ruling anything. His notion of 'unity' may indeed be the opposite of what everybody else holds it to be.
It is quite easy to conflate unity with homogeneity,
There must be a homogenous command and control system for unity to obtain. The hand is different from the foot but they belong to a unified body if they respond to commands from the brain and nervous system.
the unfortunate fallout of which is that differences are viewed as being anti-unity.
Secessionism is anti-unity. Rahul needs to clarify that India isn't like the EU. It is a highly unitary State with no 'dual sovereignty' such as obtains in the USA.
Whilst refrains like “united we stand, divided we fall” and “unity in diversity” remain popular, communal hatred continues to fester in India.
Hindus seem to be getting more united. There is more and more intermarriage across boundaries of caste, region and sect.
Sir Cyril Radcliffe did not draw India’s partitioned maps with the help of a ruler (unlike in Africa).
Radcliffe had to demarcate Muslim majority from non-Muslim majority areas.
And yet, our communities appear to be divided by lines being drawn straight through our macro differences of communal belief, custom, diet, language and tradition, and through our micro differences of opinion within a family.
I've heard that happens in the Netherlands. Apparently, Princess Beatrix would get drunk and go around drawing lines all over the place.
On the one hand, it could be argued that the two successive BJP governments have exacerbated the intolerance of differences to unprecedented levels.
This could only be argued if there was relevant evidence- at least that's what a Law Professor should say.
On the other, it has also been argued that the several successive Congress governments did little to demarginalise minorities.
Congress slaughtered Muslims and Sikhs on an industrial scale.
By letting the communal fissures persist, it has only enabled the BJP to now manipulate them.
This is mad. The BJP isn't getting 'minority' votes. It is getting Hindu votes. Hindus are the overwhelming majority in India. Does Dhruv really not know this?
The BJP has been very careful not to insult Hindus in any way. This appears to be a sensible policy.
Be that as it may, I understand that the Bharat Jodo Yatra was not intended to apportion blame, but rather to imbue the forward-looking vision of love, tolerance and unity amongst the many peoples that make India.
In which case, we understand that this guy is stoooopid.
Nonetheless, it is one thing to call for a “united” India, but quite another to articulate what “unity” means, and how this can be achieved.
So what? Nobody is forcing anybody to articulate shit.
This is especially important because “unity” is not exclusively a Congress slogan, but that of every mainstream political party in India.
In which case, it is not important at all.
So far, what we have learnt from reading Dhruv's article is that there are Indian origin people younger than Rahul who are even more infantile in their political views.
It is clear to me that many holding strong opinions on what it means to be Indian do not quite understand her diversity.
Why is this clear to Dhruv? Is it because he is stooopid? The fact is 'strong opinions' on a topic are linked to preference intensity which is independent of the information set. We know for a fact that there have been separatist movements based on the strong opinion that there are too many Hindus in India. An ethnically cleansed Pakistan is the result of this 'strong opinion'. Would Khalistanis stop wanting a separate state if they understood that many Indians are gay and speak non Indo-European languages?
It would be surprising if they might recognise the average north-eastern citizen with mongoloid features as Indian at all, leave alone empathise with her problems with military excesses.
'Mongoloid features'? How fucking racist is this cunt?
It would also be surprising should they skip a heartbeat before branding people protesting the proposal to adopt Hindi as the lingua Indica as being anti-India.
The BJP has made no such proposal. It is enabling States- like BJP ruled Karnataka- to replace English with their own State language so as to make things easier for the vast majority of the State's people.
India as a nation state may have been an “improbable miracle”,
This cretin thinks some miracles are probable. I suppose he means 'improbable democracy'- except dynastic rule isn't really democratic.
but does this miracle bear any semblance of a nation state other than in its polity?
Yes. It is a Hindu country. Hindus want to stick together rather than succumb to salami tactics once again. No doubt, non-Hindu areas have secessionist tendencies. But that still leaves a large, solidly Hindu, contiguous land-mass. The BJP will rule over it because the BJP believes in Hindutva and India is eighty percent Hindu.
And if indeed the idea of India is united only in its polity,
then, politically, it will continue to thrive as a modern nation state. A country with a disunited polity will face difficulties in this respect.
one reaches the irresistible conclusion
if one is as stupid as shit
that the idea of India as a nation state has been historically one of Empire building
No. The idea of India as a nation state is based on Hindus wanting to hang together. That's why the Indian National Congress- which Gandhi described as Hindu party in 1939- monopolized the Hindu vote in 1946, while the Muslim League cornered the Muslim vote.
The Indian nation-state does have a dynasty- currently out of power but it would be false to say that Indira or Rajiv wanted to annex Bangladesh or Sri Lanka.
and it continues to be just that.
only in the mind of a cretin.
At the heart of every empire lies the greed to centralise power in an ever-increasing hegemony over geographies and populations.
This was not the case with the British Empire- the biggest the world has ever seen. Nehru did centralize power because Hindus wanted to hang together rather than succumb to Muslim/Communist/ neo-Imperialist salami tactics. As for greed- Congress is fond of money. That's true enough.
Greater this hegemony, greater is the distance between those in power and those they represent.
This idiot does not get that power is more cheaply, profitably, and effectively applied close to relevant terrain and population. Perhaps this silly man thinks 'hegemony' has some magical power coz like Gramsci was actually a wizard- right?
This, in turn, whittles down accountability, and in that the idea of Empire is rotten.
What is rotten is this guy's ability to write English. Accountability arises out of countervailing power. That's what matters. Civil Society is supposed to provide this. One example is Tax lawyers working out ways by which Capital gains a countervailing power over rent-seeking bureaucracies and administrations. This may involve off-shoring or pyramiding or methods yet more arcane. If Capital is mobile, Governments have to be more transparent and predictable so as to attract or retain investment. Even the Greek Government had to stop publishing fraudulent Accounts.
I live in the Netherlands, a country smaller than the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.
It has a Frisian separatist movement.
It is not uncommon to find oneself cycling alongside Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, in the Hague.
Only if you actually cycle in the Hague. Most people don't.
This level of accessibility of Dutch elected representatives at the municipal, provincial and national level ensures accountability.
No. The fact that Holland is rich ensures that it can pay plenty of people to be accessible to other people.
Despite little to no sense of nationalism,
because the place is tiny
there is a greater sense of solidarity and egalitarianism amongst the Dutch.
Why compare tiny Holland, whose per capita Income is almost ten times that of India, with the most populous country in the world? Is it because Dhruv has shit for brains?
Both accountability of the representatives and the solidarity of the electorate are causal to each other, and are evident in some of the highest tax rates matched by some of the best (and increasingly sustainable) public goods and services in the world. This, I think, is a working model of unity of people and of polity.
Only because it was no such thing for many centuries during which productivity rose greatly though poorer Frisians, etc, had to emigrate.
One might be forgiven to wonder what may have been if India were never united as a country, but as a loose economic union like the European Union.
We don't have to wonder. Pakistan would have conquered Kashmir, kept East Punjab under siege, and made alliances with Princes in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh etc. The Assamese might have fought back but West Bengal would have gone under. Meanwhile the littoral states would have had to find Super-power allies for naval protection. Without centralized economic unity, Hindu India would not have had an Army or a Navy. It would be a collection of warring states some of which would be under Communist control while others would be Islamic protectorates. There would be some foreign concessions along the coast line alongside Portuguese and French colonies.
The 30-odd nation states would have given us as many social, political, economic experiments to learn from as a community of nations.
Nonsense! There would have been war-lordism as in China in the Thirties. The question is whether the Communists could have waded through a sea of blood to take power. In some places, maybe. But, if Hindus were divided, only the Muslims would be able to provide alternative military leadership. But then, if Hinduism turned out to be utterly shite, Hindus would have had a big incentive to convert.
The vastly smaller geographies and populations under singular administrations may have kept the polity honest, accessible and accountable.
There were plenty of Princely States. They were shitty. More importantly, their armies tended to be crap.
The inevitable economic interdependence between such nation-states may have maintained harmony.
No. States would have been dependent on their Great Power munitions supplier. They'd exploit their own people to the hilt so as to buy guns and hire soldiers of fortune.
One might not be able to rule out the politics of othering of minorities all together,
Pakistan ethnically cleansed them. Why 'other' when you can kill?
but as I see it in Europe,
which was saved from Hitler by Uncle Sam and Joe Stalin
that would likely be at a much smaller scale than what we see in India.
Instead of five hundred Princely States, India would have had a few thousand. Smart people would have run away to anywhere Whitey was still in charge.
Relations between national governments would remain rather business-like, leaving little room for the politics of hate at a subcontinental scale.
Pakistan has plenty of hate and terror to export. That's why we need the Army. Nehru was a fool for weakening it. Had India lost in 1965, there would have been full scale ethnic cleansing of Muslims.
Of course, it would be naïve to suggest that one should partition India into 30-odd nation states in 2023.
Dhruv would get his head kicked in if he did it in India.
But could we imagine an India in which fiscal and political power is distributed amongst the peoples of India to ensure accessibility and accountability?
Fiscal power has to do with tax revenue. People who pay nothing in tax have no fiscal power. Parliament is about tax payers deciding what to do with tax revenue. If there is no tax revenue, Parliament is useless. Squeeze the rich and they run away or stop being rich or join the black economy. Squeeze the poor- but if their productivity is low, there is nothing to squeeze. Next comes hyperinflation and an IMF intervention and a collapse of entitlements.
This shouldn’t be a very far-fetched idea given that India is, after all, a federal “union of states”.
No it isn't. It is a Union which decides what is or isn't a State. There is no 'dual sovereignty'. Like Pakistan, in 1954, India could have had a 'one unit' scheme dissolving State borders.
Unfortunately, India’s constitutional set up is biased towards greater centralisation of power.
Because that is what Hindus wanted. They genuinely feared the Muslims. Gandhi kept telling them that once the Brits left the Muslims and the Punjabis would gang up and grab everything. That's why the Brits must hand over the Army to the INC before leaving.
It is only a corollary that federalism has been eroded every time a pre-eminent political figure has come to power in New Delhi.
Manmohan Singh is the only non-politician to have been PM. But he carved up Andhra Pradesh against the wishes of the AP Legislative Assembly. This turned out to be a disaster for the Congress party.
The period from 1952 to 1967 was a period of a pre-eminent party,
But Centralization had already happened. The 1956 States Reorganization Act made it absolutely clear that the Center and the Center alone decided the boundaries of States or Union Territories. In 1960, Bombay State was split up. In 1966 it was the turn of Punjab. By then, it was clear that Chief Ministers were vulnerable to intrigue or being dismissed on one excuse or another so that President's rule could be imposed. Indira's subsequent lurch to the Left gave the Center yet more draconic economic powers.
but Nehru’s plebiscitary leadership
The Prime Minister is not directly elected. Nehru was not Napoleon III. He wasn't a 'plebiscitary leader'. On the contrary, he soon took control of his Party, his Cabinet and his Chief Ministers to whom he wrote frequent letters.
ensured that regional Congress leaders enjoyed strong mass bases of their own
The Kamaraj plan showed this was a delusion. The plain fact is no 'Congress leader' had the money to finance and conduct a separate campaign. True, you might get elected yourself but you wouldn't be able to get your followers elected. So you'd simply be wasting your time on the opposition benches.
– resulting in a sort of intra-party federalism.
Rubbish! Not a single CM could challenge Nehru on anything save, perhaps, Hindu issues- e.g cow slaughter in UP. But, Sampuranand was pushed out in 1960 by Chandra Bhanu Mehta who would later reveal how Nehru and his daughter milked UP to subsidize the National Herald as their own mouthpiece. By this time all Congress State Committees showed evidence of what was called 'groupism' to distinguish it from factionalism which might have some ideological component. Essentially, there was a three fold struggle having to do with Party and general elections as well as lobbying at the Center. The Kamaraj plan, being a transparent ploy to get rid of certain people, destroyed any prospect of Party democracy strengthening the cohesiveness of elected administrations. Instead, groups sought to control money and then looked outside the Party for allies. Mrs. Gandhi's leftward lurch appeared a plausible way of turning her wing of Congress into a proper, cadre-based, ideological party. Sanjay's emergence, in this context, appeared a straw to clutch at. But- as Bahaguna's trajectory made clear- Congress was now fractally groupist. Only by turning it explicitly dynastic could it have any sort of coherence. This meant that 33 years after the House of Windsor gave up paramountcy over India, its place was openly taken by the House of 'the Widow'- as Rushdie referred to Indira in his novel Midnight's Children.
Dhruv, silly man that he is, does not see that talk of 'divide and rule' and 'Imperialism' and power being exercised in a remote and inaccessible manner, can only apply to Sonia and Rahul. It can't apply to a meritocratic, cadre based, party like the BJP.
Indira Gandhi was the first pre-eminent political figure and dealt a major blow to federalisation through the proclamation of emergency and employed Article 356 of the Constitution to dismiss non-Congress state governments.
Indira had dismissed the Communist Government in Kerala in 1959. It had previously been used in 1951 in Punjab. Between 1966 and 1977, it was used 39 times.
The period between 1989 and 2014 represented perhaps the heyday of Indian federalism so far.
Nonsense! It was only in 1994 that the Bench narrowed the scope for the use of Article 356. However, separatist threats in Kashmir and Punjab meant that 'federalism' was off the table. Moreover, at the time, the hope was that the Center would impose Labor, Land and other reform unilaterally though, it was admitted, particular States could always frustrate implementation.
The coalition governments at the Centre ensured that regional interests were looked after by policy decisions taken in New Delhi.
They shared the loot with regional parties- that is true enough.
It was in this era that liberalisation marked the end of the centralised licence raj, and states could attract foreign investments of their own accord.
Or deter it because they were shit at governance and the Unions were kray kray.
The year 2014, however, marked the return of a pre-eminent figure in national politics, which was only strengthened in 2019.
So, Dhruv thinks India has only had three 'pre-eminent' leaders- Nehru, Indira and Modi. Why is 'the Wire' publishing this BJP propaganda?
And with it have come increasingly unitary laws, policies and political manoeuvres. Demonetisation, the Citizenship Amendment Act, the proclamation of the President’s rule in Arunachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir, the dilution of Article 370 and conversion of a fully-fledged state into two union territories, orchestrating defections to capture power in states in which the dominant party could not form governments, are but a few examples.
Of what? All these things had been done before by non-BJP regimes. It was Nehru who first jailed his pal Abdullah. He was PM when Kerala's Communist Government was dismissed. He created plenty of States and Union Territories.
The introduction of the Goods and Services Tax has been hailed as an achievement of cooperative federalism.
By the BJP- sure. But it is nothing of the sort. Fiscal harmonization is the hallmark of unitary States. America has different rates of State Sales tax. But then it has dual sovereignty. India doesn't.
Alas, even there the Centre holds an effective veto over the states in the GST Council.
So there is no fucking federalism in Indian fiscal policy.
Given that BJP-run state governments defer to Modi, the GST Council tends to become an ineffective model of federalism, as the veto is transformed into fiat.
one may as well say it is an ineffective model of lingerie or swim-wear.
Perhaps federalism should not be left to the mercy of electoral winds of the day, and it may be time to reconsider India’s quasi-federal constitutional set up in favour of something wherein the Centre-state relations are somewhat inverted.
So that different States can secede whenever they wish?
The Centre might be responsible for areas like defence,
true enough
the protection of fundamental rights,
that's the job of the Courts
and the harmonisation of national norms.
no elected government has any such duty or right.
Fiscal and most legislative powers might be devolved exclusively onto the states.
In which case there will be no Army. Each state will employ its own people as soldiers.
“National unity” would be better served if it were interpreted, not as belligerent nationalism, but rather as solidarity.
What good would solidarity do next time Pakistan or China invades? A nationalism which is not capable of belligerence can't wage war. It can go on hunger-strike to show disapproval of being conquered by maniacal foreigners but that won't help it any.
This could be fostered through ensuring free movement of individuals, goods, services and capital within India.
Not to mention laying out a red carpet for invading troops or just a bunch of gangsters who want to rob and rape and enslave Indian people.
One can wax eloquent about unity in the abstract as observed in Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, or in the BJP’s Akhand Bharat or Sabka Sath Sabka Vikaas rhetoric. But unless it is translated into concrete policy proposals of how India can truly respect diversity whilst maintaining solidarity and ensuring accountability, the rhetoric is likely to remain hollow.
Nothing wrong with rhetoric remaining hollow. What is dangerous is 'concrete policy proposals' which are as stupid as shit. Dhruv's own ideas are actually shittier than those of Rahul. Dhruv may be typical of a cohort whose brains have been stuffed with shit in 'liberal' campuses. No wonder, the moon-calf, Rahul, still attracts support.
No comments:
Post a Comment